The corno da tirarsi ("pull horn") is a

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

brass instrument A brass instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by sympathetic vibration of air in a tubular resonator in sympathy with the vibration of the player's lips. Brass instruments are also called labrosones or labrophones, from Latin a ...

Johann Sebastian Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the '' Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard w ...

wrote for the instrument when he was working in

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...

, and it appears to have been played for him by

Gottfried Reiche Gottfried Reiche (; 5 February 1667 6 October 1734) was a German trumpet player and composer of the Baroque era. Reiche is best known for having been Johann Sebastian Bach's chief trumpeter at Leipzig from Bach's arrival there in 1723 until Rei ...

. It has been stated that it appears in four

Bach cantatas This is a sortable list of Bach cantatas, the cantatas composed by Johann Sebastian Bach. His almost 200 extant cantatas are among his important vocal compositions. Many are known to be lost. Bach composed both church cantatas, most of them for ...

. However, it is only called for in three cantatas by name, BWV 46, 162 and 67. Aside from its appearance in the works of Bach, there is no other evidence of its existence – Picon states "No… ''corno da tirarsi'' instrument remains. Nor some dictionary article, maker's bill, player's list, picture or document of any kind that would bring proof of the actual existence of the instrument. The reality of the ''corno da tirarsi'' is only documented (as far as we know) by its music – and that by a single composer." Its characteristics are debated, but it was most likely a

horn Horn most often refers to: *Horn (acoustic), a conical or bell shaped aperture used to guide sound ** Horn (instrument), collective name for tube-shaped wind musical instruments *Horn (anatomy), a pointed, bony projection on the head of various ...

that resembled the "Inventions" horn of the late 18th century: "a freely-moving, double (cylindrical) tuning slide positioned diametrically across its circular body". It also may have been a

slide trumpet The slide trumpet is an early type of trumpet fitted with a movable section of telescopic tubing, similar to the slide of a trombone. Eventually, the slide trumpet evolved into the sackbut, which evolved into the modern-day trombone. The key dif ...

References

{{reflist Baroque instruments Brass instruments